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Student Assistant at Mason Libraries Wins Marvel’s Create a Comic Book Character National Contest

Mason Libraries student assistant Elizabeth Bass entered a “create-your-own-comic-book-character” sponsored by Marvel Comics and Harley-Davidson Motorcycles and won an all-expense-paid trip to Comic-Con International: San Diego, often dubbed the largest comic book convention in the world. Bass’s entry included a photo of herself, to be used for the actual look of the new character, and a concise description as pithy as any annotation in a scholarly bibliography:

Bass submitted the character she created – “Backfire” – to a contest sponsored by Marvel Comics and Harley-Davidson Motorcycles. (Courtesy of Marvel Comics)

“Backfire stands at the ready, always prepared to fly into battle on her tricked-out Street Bob at a moment’s notice. With a custom exhaust system sporting her favorite flame thrower, her baby’s powerful and dangerous backfire has earned her the reputation as an explosive new superhero.”

“I wanted to create a hard-core female character who was empowered on a motorcycle,” says Bass, a history major interested in Greek and Roman classics. “What’s cool about Marvel comics is that many of their female characters are complicated and realistic.” Read more…